The Importance of Ambiguity

It's not the sort of thing you would say if you wanted to assure someone that it is really your name, right? It's something that you would say to someone if they already knew your name. He doesn't even say, my friends call me Ishmael. No, no, no. He's speaking to you directly in the imperative. Call me Ismael. Well, there's a reason it's so famous. It's power is its studied ambiguity. The whole nature of the narrative is the ambiguous nature of its narrator. And it does it so well in three words. It's immediately unforgettable.